Casey Chan

Amazon is reportedly going to introduce an ad-supported Kindle Fire next week, according to the WSJ. Like its Kindle with Special Offers, the ad-supported Kindle Fire would be cheaper but would also "display an ad after the user 'wakes' the gadget". Would you care about ads on your tablet?

Currently, Amazon sells the Kindle with Special Offers for $79 while the regular Kindle is $109, that $30 saved is about a 27.5% discount for the ad-supported model vs the regular model. The Kindle Keyboard 3G with Special Offers has a $50 discount (or 26.5% off) over the model without ads. The Kindle Fire is currently $199, if Amazon uses a similar percentage price cut for an ad-supported Kindle Fire (no guarantee they will, this is just spitballing) that's about $55 off, making a theoretical ad-supported Kindle Fire cost $144. That's cheap. If Amazon just wants to conservatively cut the price by $30-$50 (again, no guarantee they will), the ad-supported Kindle Fire would cost $149-$169. Still pretty damn cheap.

So, would you want to buy a tablet that shows you ads "after you wake the device up" if you could save 30-50 bucks? What about less money? More money?